Post by John Lanchbery, Principal Climate Change Adviser at the RSPB
Often unreported amidst the high profile politics of the international climate talks are the negotiations on saving tropical forests or, in the snappy jargon of the UN process: ‘reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries; and the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests and enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries’, REDD+ for short.
It has long been recognised that tropical forests not only contain about 70% of all biodiversity but that deforestation accounts for between 15 and 20% of all human emissions; more than the EU or emissions from all of the World’s transport. The difficulty always was that forests are worth next to nothing if left standing and so the economic incentives are to clear them for highly lucrative tropical crops, such as oil palm in SE Asia or soy in Latin America.
The trick was thus to somehow place a monetary value on forests that would negate drivers of deforestation. At the end of 2005, Papua New Guinea (PNG), Costa Rica and eight other forested countries did just that. They proposed that developing countries should be paid for reducing emissions from deforestation; a neat trick because the UN Climate Convention understands about mechanisms to pay for reducing emissions. Since then, the proposal has expanded to include all emissions (and carbon sequestration) from all human activities in forests.
Unusually, REDD+ remains very much a negotiation led by developing countries that one rarely hears from in other parts of the climate talks, such as PNG, Columbia and the Congo Basin group. Even more unusually, all countries really want REDD+ to work, although they differ about precisely how it should work. Participation by the non-governmental organisations (NGOs) is therefore welcomed in the REDD+ talks because we have lots of bright ideas about how REDD+ could be most effective. We work closely with many countries, including the bigger, more prosperous one, such as Brazil.
In Durban and during the course of 2011, there were two main topics on: sources of finance for REDD+ and several key technical matters. Resolving the technical issues proved hard, because they are genuinely complex and there was too little time to discuss much detail.
In the end a fairly good conclusion was reached on how to set the reference levels against which countries’ performance will be assessed, although there will be further work on the topic next year. The other main technical subject was on how to provide information to the UN on national implementation of biodiversity, social and governance safeguards. The conclusion was really just a holding position with, again, more work scheduled for next year.
After negotiations ran late into the last possible night on sources of finance for REDD+, the outcome was pretty good. In particular, finance was linked strongly not just to carbon but to the implementation of biodiversity, social and governance safeguards too. More detailed discussions on finance are scheduled for next year.
The RSPB remains convinced that REDD+ is key to saving the world's rainforests, along with action at home to make sure our consumption habits aren't leading to trees being chopped down. We're going to keep on pushing for an effective deal on REDD+ and will be looking for serious progress next year, both internationally and in the UK, who is a major funder of rainforest projects.